Once a Hero Read online

  "Therapy here?" That got out before she could control the emotion in it, the scorn and anger. "Here, where the therapists told me it was all my imagination, all fever dreams?"

  "I'm sorry," he said, but this time with an edge of irritation. She knew that tone; he could apologize, but that was supposed to be the end of it. She was supposed to accept that apology and let it go. Not this time. Not again. "I—we—made a mistake, Esmaya. We can't change that now; it's past. I can't possibly convince you how badly I feel about it—that it was a mistake—but there were reasons. I asked advice . . ."

  "Don't," she said harshly. "Don't make excuses. I'm not stupid; I can see what you would like to call the realities. He—" she could not bring herself to dirty her mouth with the name. "He was an officer, the son of a friend; there was a civil war in progress; you could not risk a feud—" Memory reminded her that the young man's father had commanded a sizable force himself. Not merely a feud, but potentially a lost war. Her military training argued that a child's pain—even her pain—weighed less than an entire campaign. But the child she had been, the child whose pain still shaped her reactions, the child whose witness had been denied, refused that easy answer. She had not been the only victim—and for the victims, no victories sufficed . . . the victories were not for them, did not help them. Yet defeat promised only more of the same. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force back all the feelings that wanted to escape, shut them back into the darkness. "It did not take rejuvenation to make you prudent," she said, throwing at him the only new weapon she had.

  A short silence, during which her father's breathing was almost as harsh as hers had been that bitter day.

  "You need help, Esmaya," her father said, finally. His voice was almost back to normal, warm and steady; the general in command of himself, a lifetime's habit. She wanted to relax into the promise of fatherly love and protection.

  She dared not. "Probably I do," she said. "But not here. Not now." Not with the father who had betrayed her.

  "You won't come back," he said. He had never been stupid, only selfish. That wasn't entirely fair, but neither was he. Now he looked at her, as straight a look as he might have given a commander he respected. "You won't come back again, will you?"

  She couldn't imagine coming back, but she wasn't quite ready for that negative commitment. "I don't know. Probably not, but—you might as well know . . . I've worked out a deal with Luci for the herd."

  He nodded. "Good. I shouldn't have done that, but . . . I suppose I was still hoping you'd come home for good, especially when they treated you like that."

  And you treated me better? hovered on her lips but did not quite emerge. Her father seemed to hear it anyway.

  "I understand," he said. He didn't, but she wasn't going to argue, not now. Now she wanted to get away, far away, and have some time alone. She suspected she would have to spend some time with Fleet psychnannies in the end, but for now . . . "Please, Esmaya," he said. "Get help in your Fleet, if you won't accept it here."

  "I'm going to ride out to the valley," she said, ignoring that. He had no right to tell her what to do about the wound he'd inflicted. "Just for a day. Tomorrow. I don't want company."

  "I understand," he said again.

  "No surveillance," she said, meeting his gaze squarely. He blinked first.

  "No surveillance," he agreed. "But if you stay overnight, please let us know."

  "Of course," she said, her voice relaxing even as his had. They were alike in ways she had never noticed; even in her anger she suddenly felt the urge to tell him about the mutiny, knowing that he would not find her actions surprising, inexplicable, as the Familias officers had.

  She walked out into the afternoon, feeling nothing but a great light emptiness, as if she were a seed pod at summer's end, ready to blow away on the first autumn stormwind. Across the gravel drive, crunching under her feet. Between the beds of flowers whose color hurt her eyes. Across the sunlit fields beyond, where shadows shifted and moved and called her name, but she did not answer.

  She came back when the sun fell behind the distant mountains, tired in ways that had nothing to do with walking however far she'd walked, and went into the dim entrance hall, where the smell of food and clatter of dishes stopped her short.

  "Dama?" Esmay whirled, but it was one of the servants, offering a tray with a cup and a folded note. She shook her head to the cup of tea, took the note, and went upstairs. No one followed, no one intruded. She lay the note on her bed, and went down the hall to the bathroom.

  The note, as she'd half expected, was from her great-grandmother. Your father told me I am now free to talk to you. Come see me. She put it on the shelf above the clothes pole and thought about it. She had always assumed that her father obeyed his grandmother, as she obeyed her grandfather; though men and women had different roles, elders always ruled. She had thought so, anyway, imagining the chain of authority coming down, link by link, from eldest to youngest through all the generations.

  Had her great-grandmother really known the truth and not told her? How had her father gained so much power?

  She lay back on the bed, and as the hours passed she could not find the strength to move, to get up and bathe or change her clothes or even turn away from the square of sky she could see darkening from blue to gray to the star-spangled midnight. It was all she could do to blink her eyes when they burned from staring at the window; it was all she could do to breathe.

  In the first light of dawn, she struggled up, stiff and miserable. How many mornings she had wakened stiff and miserable, hoping to see no one on the way to the baths, on the way out . . . and here she was again, supposedly a hero—she would have laughed at the thought if she could—once more alone at the top of her father's house, once more awake and miserable after a sleepless night.

  She told herself, firmly, in the tone she thought Admiral Serrano would use, to get a grip on herself. A deep breath of the morning air, sweet-scented with the nightblooming flowers on the house wall. She made it to the bathroom, showered, brushed her teeth. In her room she dressed in riding clothes; when she came down the stairs she heard the familiar clatter in the kitchen where the cooks were already at work. If she put her head in, hoping for a taste of the first baking, they'd want to talk to her. She went on, past the kitchen, to the storeroom. Inside on the right, if the custom hadn't changed, was a stone jar of trail bread. Anyone could grab a handful, if headed out to do early chores.

  The stable, busy as always by daylight . . . the grooms and their helpers scurrying from stall to stall, buckets clattering. She went to the stable office, where she found her name at the top of the list of the day's riders. Her father had done that, probably the night before, and she felt no gratitude. In another hand, someone had written in a horse's name, Sam.

  "Dama?" One of the grooms. "When you're ready, dama."

  "I'm ready," Esmay said through a dry throat. She ought to have taken a water bottle too, but she didn't want to go back for it. The groom went ahead of her, down the aisle of that barn and into another and out again into the small training ring, where a bored brown horse leaned its chin on the rail where it was tied. A trail saddle, slicker tied neatly behind the cantle, saddlebags, water bottle . . . her father must have specified that, too. She hadn't needed to take the trail bread. A trail bridle, easy to unclip the bit so the horse could graze, a long lead-line now clipped into the hitching rail's permanent loops.

  The groom offered his linked hands, and she mounted; he unclipped the lead and handed her the end to tuck into the saddle ring. "He is good, but not too fast," the groom said, and opened the gate into the upper pastures.

  She turned the horse's head onto the trail that would, hours later, lead to her valley. Eventually her stiff body relaxed into the rhythm of its walk, and she made herself look around. Morning light lit the recesses of the mountains on her right, and the vast rolling pastures that spread from their foot as far east as she could see.

  She could remember riding out h
ere from childhood. She had always taken a deep breath, going out the gate, because it meant freedom. Thousands of hectares, dozens of trails, hidden wooded hollows even in this open grazing land, and all the intricate topography of the mountains . . . no one could find her, once she was out of sight of the house. Or so she'd thought.

  She took the deep breath, and it caught in her throat. Anger sat on one shoulder, and grief on the other; the stink of old lies filled her nose and she could not think of anything else. She had lived through the assault itself—she had, thanks to Seb Coron, outlived the assailant. But she had not outlived the effects . . . worst of all effects, the lies.

  The horse ambled on, carrying her along as time did, mere passage without change . . . without the right change . . . without healing. She could ride forever—the horse slowed, and she looked up to find they'd come to a fork in the trail; she legged it to the right—and it would not help. Nothing would help. Nothing could help. Nothing on Altiplano, at least.

  At the second fork, she turned right again. It was stupid, going to the valley when she felt like this, and yet it had helped before. At other bad times in her life, she had gone there and found peace, at least for awhile. She rode on, seeing little, hearing little. It hurt so much. It hurt beyond hurting, to the point where pain became a white fog, as the physical pain had been then.

  She argued with herself, part of her defending her family even now. It wasn't true they had done nothing: the man was dead. But that was Seb Coron, doing it for her father, not her father doing it for her. And what if Coron had lied about that? It wasn't true that her father hadn't cared: he'd done what he thought would help. But it hadn't helped, and he hadn't changed his mind. He, whose rule had been "If one thing doesn't work, try another."

  She rode beside the creek now, but its spring-full rushing made only a white noise she found annoying. It was too loud. In the shade of the trees, she felt cold; in the sun she felt scorched. The horse sighed, and pulled a little toward the water. She halted it, clambered off feeling every stiff muscle, and led it down to drink. It laid its lips on the water and sucked; she could see the gulps rising up its gullet. She waited until it was finished, until it lifted its head and gave her a look and then tried to stray off toward some buttonweed twigs. She didn't want to climb back on, but she had to.

  She walked instead, leading the horse, until her legs felt better. By the sun, it was late morning. She didn't really want to go on to the valley but where else could she go? Someone would ask, knowing where she always went . . . she pulled herself back into the saddle, and rode on.

  The valley was smaller than she remembered, and she could feel nothing for it. The pines, the poplars, the creek, the meadow. She looked around it, trying to feel something . . . it was hers, it would always be hers . . . but all she felt was pain and emptiness. She slid off the horse and took the bit out of its mouth. She could walk around and let it graze for an hour before heading back. She remembered to loosen the girth, then took down a water bottle and drank. Her body wanted food, but her mind did not; she made it halfway through the lunch the cooks had packed for her before her mind won the battle, and she threw up what she'd eaten.

  She felt faint, then, and sat on the cold ground with her head down on her knees; the horse snatched at the grass nearby, the ripping and chewing of grass punctuating her thoughts. What could she do? Emptiness behind her, emptiness before her.

  In the middle of that emptiness, those few vivid moments when she had done something right, and saved someone else. Heris Serrano. Vida Serrano. What would they say now, if they knew all this? Would it explain what the admiral had wanted explained? Would it change anything? Or would it be worse, far worse, to let them know what had happened to her? She already had black marks against her; she had known from childhood that nothing in a military career is ever completely forgotten or forgiven. If she became not only the colorless, ordinary young officer from a backwoods planet, who just happened to do the right thing once and save a Serrano neck . . . if she admitted that she was damaged, fractured, prone to nightmares . . . that had to put her in more jeopardy. That had to risk being thrown out, sent home . . . except she had no home. Not this valley, not anywhere.

  When her head cleared a little, she made herself drink again, and eat the other half of lunch. This time it stayed down. It tasted like dust and wood, but it stayed down.

  She was home well before dark, handing over the dry, cool horse to the groom with thanks. Her stepmother hovered in the hall; Esmay nodded politely.

  "I rode too far," she said. "I need a long bath, and bed."

  "Could I send up a tray?" her stepmother asked. It was not her stepmother's fault. It had never been her stepmother's fault; she wasn't sure her stepmother even knew. If her father had kept it such a secret, perhaps she didn't know even now.

  "Thank you," Esmay said. "Soup and bread would be fine—I'm just too tired."

  She was able to get herself in and out of the bath, and she ate the food on the tray when it came. She put the tray back out in the hall, and lay on the bed. She could just see the corner of her great-grandmother's note on its shelf. She didn't want to see it; she didn't want to see anything.

  The next morning was marginally better. Luci, who clearly knew nothing, wanted her to come watch a schooling session with the brown mare. Esmay could think of no polite way out of it, and partway through the session came out of herself far enough to notice that the problem with the canter depart was Luci's failure to keep her outside hip in place. Luci accepted this with good grace, and offered a tube of liniment for Esmay's obvious stiffness. They went in to lunch together.

  In the afternoon, her conscience would not let her avoid her great-grandmother any longer.

  "You are very angry with me," her great-grandmother said, not looking up from her embroidery. She had to use a thick lens and a special light, but she worked on it every day, Luci had said.

  "I am angry," Esmay said. "Mostly with him, I think." Meaning her father, which surely her great-grandmother knew.

  "I am still angry with him," her great-grandmother said. "But I'm too old to put much energy into the anger. It's very tiring, anger, so I ration it. A sharp word a day, perhaps."

  Esmay suspected humor at her expense, but the old woman's face had a soft vulnerability that she'd never noticed before.

  "I will say I was wrong, Esmaya. It was how I was brought up, but it was still wrong of me. Wrong not to tell you, and wrong to leave you as I did."

  "I forgive you," Esmay said quickly. The old woman looked at her.

  "Don't do that. Don't lie to me, of all people. Lies added to lies never make truth. You don't forgive me—you can't forgive me that fast."

  "I don't . . . hate you."

  "Don't hate your father, either. Be angry with him, yes: he has hurt you and lied to you, and anger is appropriate. You need not forgive him too soon, any more than you forgive me. But don't hate, because it is not natural to you, and it will destroy you."

  "I'm going away, as soon as I can," Esmay said. "And I'm not coming back."

  "I know." Again, a sense of vulnerability, but not intended to sway her decision. Her chin firmed. "Luci told me about the herd. You are right, and I will argue for Luci when the time comes."

  "Thank you," Esmay said. It was all she could say; she kissed the old woman and went away.

  The days crept by, then the weeks. She counted them off; she would not cause a scandal by moving to the city for the rest of her leave, but she could not help watching the calendar. Her resolve had hardened: she would go, and never return. She would find someone—not Luci, who had no feel for it, but someone else—to become the valley's guardian. Nothing here meant anything to her now but pain and sorrow; the very food tasted bad in her mouth. She and her father had spoken each day of other things; she had been amazed at both of them, the way they could evade any mention of or reference to that disastrous afternoon. Her stepmother took her shopping in the city; she allowed herself to be draped in s
uitable clothes; she packed them into her duffel to take along.

  Then it was the last week . . . the last five days . . . the last four. She woke one morning stabbed by the sorrow that she had been in her valley, but she had not seen it. She had to go one more time; she had to try to salvage something, some real memory that was also a good memory, from her childhood. She had been riding almost every day, just to keep Luci company, so if there was a horse free, she could go now, today.

  For the dama, there was always a horse free. A trail horse? Of course, dama, and the saddle, and the bridle. And might the groom suggest that this horse accepted hobbles well? Very good. She went back into the kitchen, and collected a lunch. She felt, if not happy, at least positive . . . the pull of Fleet, she thought, the knowledge that in just a few days she would be back in her new home, forever.

  The valley opened before her, magical again, as it had been in her childhood . . . as she would remember it in the moment of her death. It hardly deserved the name of "valley," although when Esmay had first seen it, she'd been so young it seemed large. Now she could see that what she remembered was merely a saucer in the side of the mountain, a grassy glade in which a small pool trickled away in a murmuring stream that would become a rushing noisy stream only further down. On one side were the dark pines, secretive, rising from rocky ledges, and facing them were the white-boled poplars with their dancing leaves. In this brief mountain spring, the new grass was spangled with pink and yellow and white, the windflowers and snowflowers . . . a few weeks later, the tall scarlet and blue lupines would bloom, but now all the flowers lay close to the ground.

  Esmay leaned back in the saddle and took in a deep breath. She wanted to breathe in and in, filling herself with the resinous scent of pine, the crisp scent of mint and grass, the sweetness of the flowers, the tang of poplar and even the sour rank smell of the lush weeds near the water. She could feel tears rising, and she clamped down on her emotions. Instead of crying, she dismounted, and led her horse forward to drink from the pool. Then she removed the saddlebags, and slung them over her shoulder. She led the horse to the fallen pine—still there after all these years—and unsaddled it; she put the saddle over the leaning trunk, then hobbled the horse before removing the bridle.